I. The Great Matter

Let me respectfully remind you

Life and death are of supreme importance –
Time passes swiftly and opportunity is lost –
Let us awaken –
awaken . . .

Take heed: Do not squander your life.

 

I’ve chanted those words hundreds of times at the end of retreat days in Zen communities I’ve practiced with. I’ve heard the phrase “the Great Matter” an equal number of times. But I’m not sure I ever really got what this meant until a month ago.

In Zen Buddhism, life and death are referred to as “the Great Matter.” As in, nothing else really matters when it comes right down to it. This breath that separates life from death…. everything hinges on that breath, on the realization that one day that breath will not be taken, and on the realization that every day could be that day.

This day, this moment right now. This could be your last moment.

On the night of July 17, I was tucked away under my mosquito net in a bed in northern Thailand. I had spent almost two weeks with a wonderful small community there, the International Women’s Partnership for Peace and Justice (IWP). Every day, I shared meals with the same group of people, who came from Myanmar, China, Colombia, Australia, and Thailand. Every morning we walked to a platform overlooking rice fields and learned about liberation from suffering. And every night, we sat in the adobe temple that my friends Ouyporn and Ginger had built by hand, along with their community. We meditated together to end each day, often reciting the Metta Sutta.

The next morning, I woke up and saw Ginger in the courtyard below my room talking with another woman. She had a look of great concern on her face. As I saw her coming up the stairs to find me, I could feel it in my bones… something terrible had happened.

When Ginger got to the top of the stairs, she told me that Sangsuree, one of our dear friends and IWP community members, had been hit by a car the night before in Chiang Mai and was killed, instantly. I could not understand nor process what she was saying. She said it again. Still it did not seem real to me.

Just the morning before, I had shared breakfast with Sangsuree and another woman – we laughed a lot and had a great conversation about deep ecology, one of her many passions.

I knew that Sang, as we called her, and her lover Em were headed into Chiang Mai that day so that Sang could pick up a visa for her upcoming trip to China. As I stood behind Sang in the dishwashing line after breakfast that morning, I noticed a beautiful tattoo on her right shoulder – the wing of a bird. A thought flashed through my mind: she’s an angel, a beautiful, human angel.  I waved goodbye, thinking I’d see her the next day as I had every day for the past two weeks.

As I looked at Ginger and began to absorb this news, all I could feel and think was: How could this be? How could this woman who was so vibrantly alive in every sense of the word not be with us on this day?

The mantra Life… Death… Life… Death… kept coursing through me all that day. And then this: Freedom.

Throughout the day, different sensations moved through my body… a sense of numbness, shock, and then flashes of searing emotional and physical pain. It felt like the Universe had ruptured.

As it happened, this was the same day that we heard the news of the Malaysian Airlines plane which was shot down in the Ukraine the night before – the same night as Sangsuree’s death – and of Israeli forces starting a ground invasion of Gaza. It was one of the darkest days I’ve ever experienced.

II. Sangsuree

I want to tell you about my friend, Sangsuree. She was a poet. A singer. A proudly queer woman of color. A passionate defender of Mother Earth, an unpretentious Buddhist, a joyous pagan. Sang hailed from the rainy land of the Pacific Northwest, but her wings spread out over the wide world and especially to Thailand where she had ancestral roots through her mother’s family.

I was graced with being part of Sangsuree’s life by virtue of both of us being in the inaugural run of the Buddhist Education for Social Transformation (BEST) training course Thailand in the summer of 2013. Sangsuree was in the first BEST cohort, and I came to teach a session on “the mandala of socially engaged Buddhism.”

Sang was exactly the kind of workshop participant you’d want to have: super-bright, engaged, challenging assumptions in a powerful yet respectful way, and a lot of fun to boot. She made me a better teacher.

Every time she came into a room, the whole place lit up. Sang had the rare gift of shining but in her luminosity she did not take up space, she actually made space for others to come forth and shine.

During that 2013 summer session, we spent a little time together outside of the workshops and she peppered me with questions about the dharma, and how it could be possible to practice Buddhism in a way that was deeply connected to the earth and the elements. In other words, how to be a pagan Buddhist! I never left a conversation with Sangsuree without feeling more alive and inspired.

We said goodbye that year as I headed back to home in America and she stayed on in Thailand for a while longer. But we stayed in touch. I encouraged her to come to Santa Fe to visit me as well as Upaya Zen Center. I was sure she’d love the robust engaged Buddhism practiced there, as well as the immense beauty of this high desert land that is my home. She really wanted to come, but said it would have to wait until she finished up the other great work of her life, a master’s degree from Portland State University. Sang graduated from that program just this past spring.

Sangsuree returned to IWP this summer to complete the BEST course and then she stayed on to help mentor the new cohort and teach them yoga each morning. I was beyond delighted to find out I’d see her again this year.

Five days before her life ended, Sang and I got together to organize a full moon ceremony for the new BEST cohort. She was a dream to collaborate with – full of ideas, and an old soul at creating and holding rituals. Working to plan this ceremony with Sang, bouncing ideas back and forth so that we could blend elements of Buddhism with earth-based practices, everything felt like a big “YES!”

When I came into the temple that night, she had clearly spent lots of time creating one of the most beautiful altars I have ever seen, covered with flowers and topped off with a clear bowl of water scented with lavender oil. She held the space beautifully for the ceremony. And, as Ginger noted, she got us more reserved folks to do things we might never have ordinarily done, like putting our ear to the ground to listen to what Mother Earth was telling us. It was a beautiful night.

This was the song we ended the night with (and a video that Sang made just a few weeks before her death):

 

 

III. The Piñata

Growing up in Southern California, nearly every birthday party I attended as a kid was capped off by the breaking of a piñata. Children gleefully gathered around a circle as one of us got a baseball bat and took blindfolded swings at those amazing paper maiche creations. When someone hit it spot on, the whole thing would break open and out burst dozens of sparkly treasures (usually candy but sometimes coins or other goodies as well).

Not long after I got home from this trip to Thailand, the image of a piñata kept coming up for me. It took a moment to make the connection, but then it was clear… Sangsuree’s fabulous lived-to-the-full life and all-too-sudden death felt like that piñata, broken open into hundreds of immeasurable gifts.

These are just a few of the gifts I’ve received:

• A realization that this is it, that any moment could be our last. Something I knew intellectually before, but now is something every cell in my body understands. And with it the invitation to not waste time on anything petty, to never take for granted the presence of those I love. That’s not to say I haven’t slipped back into forgetfulness, but the mindfulness bell of death is always there.
• Getting a glimpse of the great mystery inherent in death. I have no idea what happens after life ends, I only know that I have felt Sangsuree’s presence so strongly even after her death. I felt her very much with me as I held a full moon ceremony of my own in August, back home in Santa Fe with a few close friends. Death is not the end. I am absolutely sure of that now.
• Connecting with other great souls. As the weeks have passed, those of us who loved Sangsuree (and there were many) have been connecting with each other on Facebook and in other ways. We had not known each other before, but her death has brought us together to share our own visions for a more healing and sustainable world. I want to point you to one of these remarkable souls, filmmaker Emma Carroll who put together that glorious video above. Check out her work here. It’s amazing, as is Em.

Even as we are devastated by her death, as we grieve over the friend we lost so suddenly, it feels like every memory of Sangsuree is accompanied by joy and giggles and smiles. That was the energy that she carried into the world, that’s how she showed up with everyone.

So I thank you, dear Sangsuree, for everything that you taught me in your life as well as in death. I hope that this piece of writing spreads more of your good karma to more people. We are so blessed to have known you and to keep on discovering you in every sunrise, every butterfly, every amazing tropical flower, every breath.

___________

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